


Letters from Lordran

by shai



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I
Genre: Gen, but epistolary novel, what if dark souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22742767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shai/pseuds/shai
Summary: A series of letters, never sent.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Letters from Lordran

Dear sister,

Don't blame yourself. I know I told you on the way out the door, and I'm sure you won't believe me. C'mon though - don't ignore the words your sweet little sibling picked to spend her dying breath on.

If you could hear that you'd give me a stern look and tell me not to joke about my situation. But hey, don't worry! That's the whole thing with the undead curse; I'll get some more chances at picking my dying words. Just... probably never where you'll hear them.

You'll never hear these words either: I don't have paper to write on, or a way to send a letter that'd reach you. I'm really just talking to myself, but it’s easier to be brave if I pretend I’m talking to you instead.

It’s helping, it’s staving off worries, it’s keeping me from listening so closely to all the other unliving souls here; there's nothing else to do in this here so-called asylum. I know you'll be thinking of me, and thinking of you right back is a bit of a comfort despite itself.

As time passes though it gets harder and harder to think of new things to say to you.

What would you be asking me, I wonder?

You'd ask how I got here.

Well, after that awful day when they took me away, the guards brought me and a couple of much-more-hollow new arrivals out to this prison. We’ve all heard stories about the undead of course, but I’d never seen one up close before. Both had skin dried out like leather. One’s eyes glowed like hot coals. Neither seemed to understand me when I said hello, but the red-eyed one lunged and hissed like it wanted to grab me, then bashed its head on the roof of the cage and fell back. I was too scared of them to say anything more.

The cart took us to a boat, and the boat sailed to the middle of nowhere - you'd need to know your mountainscapes better than I do to place where we are. They locked us up and just left. Days have passed, and nobody’s been back since.

No need to feed the undead, I suppose. And it's so far off the beaten track they don't think we'll escape.

So here I am, in this house for the obstinate dead, my skin slowly turning to leather like theirs. I'm trying not to be scared. We're all here in our own little cells, forgetting ourselves and being forgotten.

The one spark of hope I have is that a few of them have gotten themselves out of their cages. They're pacing the corridors aimlessly, but they don't turn when I call out.

I wonder if they broke out themselves. I wonder if someone let them out. All the ones in the open seem mindless. It's strange: you'd think it'd be the ones with a few wits left who'd find a way out, wouldn't you?

* * *

Sister,

I'm not sure how long I've been here. The square of sky I can see from the roof of my cell has gone dark and light at least ten times, but I fell into a long sleep and when I woke up I was cold as a dead thing, so the count might be short. 

Everything stays the same, but now and then I hear the sound of footsteps too heavy to belong to any of my fellow inmates.

I miss you. I forgive you; you didn't have any way of knowing what'd happen with that cart. I hope you know that.

* * *

Sister,

A man in armour dropped a corpse into my cell. The body has a bright shiny key on his belt. I’m not sure how long we stay unmoving for when we die, but it hasn’t come back to life for most of a day and a whole night.

I've been sat staring for what feels like forever, wondering if it's a trick. Maybe there are there jailers here after all. Who else would do this, other than a warden toying with the inmates?

I don't know why this'd be the game they'd pick, though. They could do whatever they want with us.

This has to be how those mindless ones got out from their cells. What I’m asking myself is, were they that mindless before, or is there something out there that knocked the sense out of them?

Part of me wants to stay put and deny them their fun, but you know me, sis; I'm not all that patient. Maybe I'm playing into someone's hands, but I'll be damned if I sit staring at a wall until my flesh rots from my bones just out of spite.

Well.

Wish me luck with whatever's outside this little corner of this house of the damned.

* * *

What's that you ask, dear sister? "How did your bad idea go", was it? "Were there guards lying in wait?"

I'll be honest, I'm still not sure about either.

I picked a more dramatic way to die the second time. You'd think going from a living person to a dead one and back would be unforgettable, but honestly, that first time it happened, I didn't notice what was happening in time to really be scared. To be honest, the shock of realising I’d become undead and would be exiled stuck with me more than the accident. The... practicalities of it, I suppose you'd say... didn't really register. 

This time, something tried to kill me and managed it. Here’s what happened: I crept through the dark stone corridors of the asylum to a hall with a door to the outside, and a huge monster jumped down to bar the exit.

It turned to face me and I scurried away, and in my scurrying I found a doorway too small for it and snuck through... and felt damn pleased with myself right up until I ran into a guard with a sword. I was so excited to see someone looking purposeful I said hello and didn’t wonder what his purpose was until he stabbed me. He was clothed in armour, but his eyes were embers. The curse has infected the guards too. 

I didn't come back to myself on the ground where I'd died this time. I woke up at a fire I'd stopped to look at in the hallway after that demon. You can see it's something a bit unwordly: it was burnt down almost to nothing until I stopped to feed it some new fuel, and as I did I realised it wasn’t burning wood or coals, but bone. 

If you could really get this message, you'd worry about this, bones seem like a dark kind of sorcery. Don't be. It sounds sinister put in words, but the light from the fire is friendly. It feels more like home than anywhere else in this miserable hole of a place. In this place of mindless dead and demons and ember-eyed guardsmen, I must take comfort where I can.

* * *

Much-missed sister, 

Eventually I plucked the courage to go back and face this prison’s outlandish guards again. This time I moved with more caution and found a sword and shield on the way; not just that but the first person willing to talk to me since I was taken away. He was the knight who'd let me out, I think; he was dying, and rambling something about a prophecy, but just hearing words was wonderful.

He gave me a potion that can knit undead flesh back together. Estus. It shines with warm colours.

The knight called himself Oscar, and his rambling was about making a pilgrimage to Lordran, the land they say the curse comes from. He's a fool to think there's any way out of here, but if there was a way out, I'd rather use it come home to you.

* * *

Sister,

I made my way past the prison's guardian demon. I won't tell you how; it was a foolhardy affair and you'd be rightly cross at me. But think about it like this: what do I have to lose?

No luck with a boat home, though.

Instead, Lordran: that strange, secretive backwater of sorcerers and those sunlight-worshipping followers of Gwyn. It lives up to its reputation for being odd. A bird carried me here, and a pair of angry skeletons chased me through the churchyard it dropped me in.

You'd love it, honestly. It's one of your old folk tales come to life, odd details and outsized characters and all. These skeletons pulled their scattered bones together and picked up swords when I set foot in their graveyard, and as I backed off this miserable old git sat resting in front of the shrine’s fire and just sat and watched me run, not blinking an eye or raising a finger to help.

I'm trying to pin down every detail in my mind, so if I ever find my way back to you, you can write a full history of the place.

Folks used to say back home that this was a rich country, but it seems gone to ruin now. The town that built the shrine's been given over to the undead, then the undead in turn were chased out by demons that came spilling out of some dark underground land of their own. Izalish, someone said. Or Izaleth? I bet you’d remember.

I went hunting through for a boat home or at least a place with food and a bed to offer, but the undead curse truly has crept over everything here. The only soul I met beyond the shrine who didn't raise weapons at me was a merchant who refused to talk til I'd made a trade - for souls, not coins, which have lost any meaning here. When I asked him about trade routes to and from the town he cackled at the question and told me he gets all his goods from the dead.

* * *

  
O sister, I miss you.

Much more than I did when you left to study scripture, or when I spent that summer out with a trading caravan. I keep dreaming you're here, and waking up it takes me a minute to remember I must be glad that you're not.

I've had my hair set on fire and an arrow shot clean through my arm, and yesterday I fell off a cliff trying to dodge a man with an axe and plummeted to another temporary death like a fool in a ha'penny show. You'd have laughed, if you'd had the week I've had. I pray you never do.

I wandered the town a long time: my thoughts keep going in the same foolish loop. First I think I'd best stay here, so I set my things down in an empty house. Then I realise there's no books there and no food, and although I don't really notice hunger any more it's boring being eternally undying, and pick my chipped and worn sword back up and set off again. And then I explore til I run into something that kills me again, and I come one more step to accepting that these string of bonfires are more a home to me than any bedroom will ever be again.

I found the third thinking, talking human of my undeath eventually, on the wrong side of this big but slow bull-demon that was attacking anyone who came near its bridge. The demon couldn't be reasoned with, but the human was friendly: a knight from Astora, here on a quest of his own. Unlike the man at the shrine who’s given up on the world or the cackling merchant who clings on to his little business, he seemed a kindly type.

So don't feel too bad for me. At least one other person in this land falling apart is staying cheerful; if he can keep his wits about him, there’s hope for me.

* * *

  
Dear sister,

You must be missing my stories of how things are here. I’m not sure what to tell, it has mostly involved killing things that can only ever die temporary deaths, and it's hard to think of any words to string together in that that won't make me sound miserable or hateful.

Here is what I mean by that: today I came across what might have been another thinking human being: this sorcerer-man with a six-eyed mask, who did magic by dancing. He threw bolts of some kind of energy at me, and I dashed forward and stabbed him to death.

I didn’t even trying to call out and make peace, and now his body is crumpled on the floor. I do not think he is undead; he has not picked himself up again.

I'm not sure if I was hoping he was or wasn't. I'm sitting with my back against the wall of the church I found him in, wondering what it says about me that I didn’t even stop to wonder if I should attack. I've been telling myself 'nowhere to go but forward', but maybe that's what everyone else in this godsforsaken ruin of a land is telling themselves too. Killing people, stealing from corpses, dying and then coming back to life to do it again.

Sorry. You wouldn’t like to hear me talk like this. I had a story about a dragon for you too, but this place is getting to me, and I can't tell it as if it's an exciting adventure today.

* * *

  
Sister,

I'd met the skeletons and that man who thinks everything's a waste of time, but I'd missed two people in the shrine when I first visited. One a smug monk - you'd hate him on sight, he’s so pompous! He gave me a copper coin to stay away, and sneers at me when I walk past. The other most important person in the place is this girl they call the fire keeper, locked in a cave beneath the bonfire.

I asked her how she was and she just cut across her throat with two fingers: doesn't take the sharpest mind to take that as meaning she can't talk. I asked if there was anything I could do to help, and she looked me straight in the eyes in a way no-one else here has, staring for long enough that I felt awkward. She touched her hand to her chest, then out to me, palm up.

She's an odd figure: grubby but very solemn, her bearing a mix between cautious and stern. I ended up sat down opposite her, turning out the little pack I picked up and offering the things in, wondering what a girl in a cage could possibly want from a town abandoned by thinking folks. I tried offering her one of the crystallised masses of souls that the shopkeepers like and even the ring I found with an engraving of a wolf, but she closed my fingers back around them. 

In that church where I killed the dancing man there had been an altar with a dead woman on it, and she'd had something bright cradled between her hands and her chest. A soul condensed into a solid form is common enough here, but this was the soul of someone special: little grey shapes swirling and moving within it.

I'd taken it, because that's how this place works. Any dead folk lucky enough that they've moved on to their final rest don't need anything they owned in this world any more.

Anyway, eventually my fingers caught around the bright little sliver of a soul from that body in the church, and I knew as I touched it that'd be what she was after: passing a relic from one holy woman to another. She took it with a kind of reverence that made me feel bad for having touched it, and she held it up and bowed deeply as it melted away into her self.

I turned to leave but she snagged my sleeve to stop me. I said something gormless - "you're welcome", I think. But almost like it was a question.

She smiled, held a finger up, and leaned forward against her cage's bars to tap her other hand against the little glass flask on my belt. I held still, expecting something else, but she just tilted her head like she was listening, then nodded and patted me on the shoulder as if to send me on my way.

Maybe one day I'll meet someone normal here.

* * *

Sweet long-lost sister,

A gargoyle tried to kill me. Actually, two of them did. Did you ever think when we were growing up, "maybe she'll grow up to fight monsters on a rooftop?"

To be honest, I was putting on a front when I said they _tried_ to kill me. They managed it. But what else do I have to do here? We undead don't really sleep, and if I sit down and rest for too long, it feels harder and harder to get back up.

So I went back again. They're between me and the church a bell, and a bell was what that man told me to look for. Now, this business of ringing bells seems like a fool's errand, but there's no other way out of here I can see and precious few other options. The folks at the shrine are vague enough about it that I'm pretty sure even they don't know what will happen themselves, but they say it has something to do with understanding the undead curse.

When it comes down to it, I'm losing the remains of my wits either way, so I might as well climb up there again and run out onto that church roof to challenge the bell's guardians. The gargoyles are no joke, but the new me has no embroidery to do or social niceties to follow. She practices her swordwork and makes nice with the local smith and picks apart the ways she's died to learn to do better next time.

Eventually I cut them down, and honestly, by the end I was enjoying the battle. I don't know how to explain it to you. Maybe this is hollowing: pain and fear losing their meanings.

Ringing the bell made a noise and nothing else. No magic light, no knitting my wasted flesh back to flush good health. Nothing at all changed.

* * *

The man at the shrine said there's another bell 'down below', and hey, maybe that'll do the trick. Maybe. Mother used to say, hope without reason is the enemy of a good life. But I have no chance at one of those any more, so what else am I going to do?

Hope without reason is all we've got to cling to as undead.

* * *

... Sister.

I'd forgotten that I used to have a sister, and that I used to talk to her. To you. It kept me- well, I won't say in my right mind, but it kept me going. I met a pyromancer who asked me about my home, all kind-faced and wry but friendly. I'd forgotten how to talk when he asked, and so I didn't answer.

Now my head's clear from that curse and I've crawled to the surface and my body's recovered a little from the plague-ridden air of Blighttown, his question's come back to my mind and I'm slowly remembering how to answer it: I left you, this time. I’ve been spinning stories of this land as if you can hear.

Sister, I wonder how clearly you remember me? I'm not sure how long it's been. Has it been a few weeks? Months?

The time before the prison feels like it may as well be decades ago. It is so completely at odds with who I am now I can hardly recognise it as me in memories. I have forgotten my own face, more or less. I remember yours just a little better.

So, the news from this haunted land is this: the fire at firelink shrine has gone out, and the woman locked up under it is dead.

* * *

Sister, searching for the second bell went so, so much worse than the first.

First I fought through a maze underground, ambushed by rats the size of a man. I'm still finding it hard to picture your face, but I can remember the sound of you laughing now, and I know you'd laugh at that, asking who I think I'm going to impress with my tall tales. Joke's on you, they were the most normal thing in the benighted place.

I couldn't say how long I was there. Felt like months. I kept trying to turn back and being chased deeper in.

Eventually I got to the very base of the horrible plague-town. I was running on anger and single-minded determination, and I didn't think twice about killing the spider-monster at the centre of it all; to my failing logic, killing her would cleanse this infested land.

It didn't, of course: if anything the scene I saw after facing her down was even more nightmarish. There was a path out to a huge cavernous landscape beyond her den, red rock and lava. Its bright colours seemed unreal after the dim claustrophobia of Blighttown, so I thought I was hallucinating from the poison.

I wandered down there like a sleepwalker past some other mindless creatures, and reached down to touch the lava. It burned my fingers down to the white bone.

If the lava was real the pallid egg-bearers all around must be too, so I fled back to the spider-queen's domain, and right at once found something that truly was unreal: the wall I perched against as I sat down to inspect my burned fingers melted away behind my back as if it had never been there.

Behind was the spider-queen's sister, helpless and frail, and a timid servant who spoke for her. The spider had been named Quelaag, and once been human, and had hidden her helpless sister away to try to protect her.

When he called her Quelaag, I noticed that I’d forgotten my own name. I just about remembered that there was a bell, and that I had come here to ring it, but neither the reasons for coming or any sense of conviction about it had survived the journey.

Still, I had come a long way to do it, so I climbed the stairs to the bell.

The sound of it ringing did something to bring me back to myself. For the first time in weeks, I noticed how gaunt and diseased my hands looked, and realised I needed to turn and climb back to the surface.

* * *

Sister, on second thought - maybe my mind really has gone. There is a talking snake in the half-fallen church.

* * *

It's been a while since I sat down to write a letter to you in my mind, sister. I'm going to make myself do it; I don't want to forget you again.

I followed the snake's instructions and found a place that feels like a legend brought to life. Anor Londo. I didn't recognise the name, but you know more old stories than me, so perhaps you have heard of it.

It is all golden sunlight and proud steep towers, all stained glass and filigree.

There's been places all through Lordran that I want to tell you about - the fortress I had to cross to get here; the friend I met there, a man from Catarina who sounds just like our uncle. This is the first sight I've seen where I've wanted to stand you in front of it and watch your face as you take it in. It's beautiful. It's - inspiring.

It'll probably be empty of thinking beings like everything else here, but everywhere else here has been places that were once given purpose by people, places that lost their purposes as their denizens lost their sense of self. This city somehow holds on to its dignity: its glory outlives its maker.

* * *

Sister, 

It is still beautiful, but if anyone asks if you want to come to Anor Londo, be wary. Stand on the ramparts and admire its steeples from afar. It is not a place for living people any more.

There is another firekeeper here, armoured and noble, but the rest of this sunsoaked cityscape is as murderous in its intentions to strangers as anywhere else in Lordran, and better at carrying them than most of anywhere else.

You would enjoy the stained glass and the central cathedral, which is built for giants. They say the lords of this place towered above their people, and the architecture does look like it bears that out.

The firekeeper asked me what brought me here. I don’t know if she meant it as a challenge, but it reminded me that there is meant to be something to find.

* * *

Today I have been exploring this great cathedral, making my way past an endless number of silver-clad knights who dissolve into light when I defeat them.

I've stopped for the day in an long-empty room. Why is there a fire here, in the servant’s quarters of this castle-church? Who knows. I am alone in the room but sometimes out of the corner of my eye it seems like there’s someone sat besides me. It should be sinister, but the flames bring with them a sense of peace.

I am not sure you would not recognise me. The darksign took away my future, and the only path I could see was to follow this odd prophecy. It seemed better than rotting in the cell in that prison, so I agreed, and now I have become a creature that seeks to move forward.

Often slowly, often painfully, but inexorably. But there is a joy to be had in making my way through these lands.

* * *

Sister, I don’t know how to talk to you about fighting and dying. You’ve never died - I hope not, at least. And I remember you as a peaceful person, the kind who picks up an insect to carry it outside instead of stepping on it.

I think I should try to put these ideas in words, though.

I have seen a lot of hollows by now. They forget how to think.

And… I’m worried that if you were watching over my shoulder as I flung myself back again and again into a fight where I am outmatched, that’s what I’d look like to you.

I think I'm choosing to fight still. I think. Remember, this is a land of monsters and warriors. It’s not quite a lie not to say but it wouldn’t quite be honest if I didn’t explain what I mean when I talk about moving forward. Sometimes what I mean is “I picked my way carefully through the wilderness”, but mostly what I mean is that there was someone or something guarding the route I wanted to take, and I killed them for blocking my way.

I tell myself there’s something to be found here, but I’m not sure I believe it. It’s hard to believe anything good could come of it.

I tell myself I’m still choosing to fight, but I can’t remember if there ever were any other choices.

I won’t know what to do if I stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Why do I love writing tragic zombie 'souls protagonists so much?
> 
> I guess there's a certain appeal to "what if fighting an endless futile battle to maintain the status quo, but you have a sword and you're in a good bleak but grand setting with cool monsters and landscapes and poignant metaphors". Also, I love the line in the opening cinematic that 'in this land, the Undead are corralled and led to the north, where they are locked away, to await the end of the world... ' - the undead plague as a slow and mundane threat being treated with a grim indefinite quarantine made me want to write a relatively-normal human reacting to it.
> 
> This protagonist would get along well with Rhea, if she ever made it back with the Lordvessel and manages to meet up with her.


End file.
